I mentioned in an earlier post how much In was enjoying running a Homebrew campaign in Middle-Earth using the Middle-Earth Role Playing books.

In the earlier post I mentioned how the Homebrew campaign allowed me to explore themes and challenges beyond the standard discovering, adventuring, and exploring. I had mentioned how I was able to run multiple sessions with the challenge of characters escaping their captors after being kidnapped.

I have experienced that a lot of published campaigns lean heavily towards the discovering, adventuring, and exploring themes before being heavily slanted towards one final BBEG confrontation. While those themes will never disappear, it is nice to balance them off with others that aren’t so common.

Besides the escaping challenge that covered a couple of sessions, I am loving the freedom of a Homebrew campaign that allows the variety of other types of challenges. After surviving escaping from the Misty Mountains, the party is journeying north to the Grey Mountains and have found that the kingdom of Norr-Dum and the line of Dain has been placed under siege and a blockade has been put in place by a kingdom of Ice-Orcs who seem to be directed by a Winter Witch. Can the blockade be broken?

Once again, the books provided by the Middle-Earth Role Playing system provide just the right amount of information to allow the Dungeon Brewmeister just enough information to use in the authoring of a novel campaign both for the players and the Dungeon Brewmeister. The Middle-Earth Role Playing books provide the realms, adventures, locations, maps, and the personas to be used as the Dungeon Brewmeister sees fit. It is never too directional or scripted.

Although there are other new sources like Grim Hollow that try to also strike a similar balance, no one else has come close to the amount of locations and logos that Middle-Earth Role Playing has done. The books really are wonderfully done.

I’m looking forward to discovering more new ideas and and perhaps totally new campaigns. I think I may never leave Middle-Earth.